UP Teaching & Learning Community Blog

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Report – Interactive Video in Education 2016

Last year, one of the first posts I wrote for the TL site was as a summary of  Kaltura, Inc’s whitepaper on the state of video in the education space. Kaltura is back at it again in 2016, this time with a much more in-depth, 45-page report. While I think it’s important to bear in mind where this study is originating (from within the enterprise video streaming industry), it does provide some interesting insights into the massive impact digital media is having on the higher education landscape.

Summary

The report starts with the obvious – the use of video across all strata of education has steadily grown in the last year. The percentages of educators, administrators, and staff adopting the use of video is up, and so are the number of different use cases being found for video across campuses and in the online space. From watching marketing, admissions, and orientation videos, to heavy use of instructional media in the classroom and in the LMS, to distant family and friends watching graduation via live-streaming, today’s college student can “expect to encounter video in every step of the educational process”.

Amongst all the statistics, pie charts and bar graphs, two trends caught my eye. First, year over year, educators and students rate their level of digital literacy at slightly lower levels than they did last year. It seems obvious that digital literacy levels are not actually dropping – suggesting, as the authors do, a distinct feeling that either new technologies and tools are being introduced faster than end users can comfortably keep up with, or that our sense of what constitutes digital literacy is rising along with expectations for more highly sophisticated media being produced more quickly, cheaply, and by more amateur or “prosumer” level content creators.

Second, the study suggests a growing preference for more produced, impactful, shorter, and entertaining video for instruction. Traditional lecture capture can be a great resource for students who miss class – but most students simply will not watch an hour video of a class they would attend in person. The growing adoption of flipped classroom pedagogy accentuates the shift in emphasis away from lecture capture towards the purposeful use of video to prepare students for active or experiential learning in the classroom.

Takeaways

As a technology support person responsible for providing professional development around the creation of instructional media, these takeaways are of great interest to me. The potential of video in teaching and learning is fantastic. As always, it will take a combination of newer, more powerful and more intuitive tools along with effective training and support to empower faculty to make the most of emerging technologies.

Luckily, I believe UP is in a good place with some of the new tools we have available for faculty creating and delivering online video – and, hopefully in a good place with support resources as I will be doing my best to provide effective, empathetic training and support for faculty engaging with media creation. Watch this space for more information on new tools, capabilities and professional development opportunities around the use of digital video for teaching and learning.  We in ATS have a lot that we plan to share with you in Fall 2016.

You can read the full Kaltura report for a much more in-depth look at the methodology and results of the study.

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An Old Dog Learns New Tech Tricks for Teaching

Several paintings and sculptures on display at the Portland Art Museum.
Several paintings and sculptures on display at the Portland Art Museum.

Every summer I teach a course called The Arts in Portland, Fine Arts 307.  It’s a follow up to the core course, Fine Arts 207, but we allow students to take FA 307 as a substitute for FA 207.  That means that some students have not had the basic introduction to film, music, theater, architecture, and visual arts.

I love the design of this summer course.  We meet twice a week in the evening.  Of the twelve sessions, nine are off-campus field trips.  We attend plays and concerts, go to the First Thursday gallery openings and the Portland Art Museum, take an architecture walking tour, and even go to a jazz club.  Students really enjoy these activities and learn a lot more than they would in a lecture.  However, there is a real problem.

Given all the field trips, it is very difficult to prepare the students, particularly the ones who have not taken FA 207.  They need to have a basic understanding of the art form and of some terminology specific to the discipline.  That’s a challenge when you are on the road most of the time.  I have held preparation sessions in theater lobbies and on the sidewalk, but that has not been as effective as I would like.  So, for Summer 2016, I tried a new approach.

I had heard about the “flipped classroom” model.  Frankly, this kind of trendy term is not appealing to me.  I’m definitely not an early adopter; I let others try things out and then consider what seems to work well.

This model employs recordings that the teacher creates in advance and posts on Moodle.  Students are expected to watch the recording and come to class with awareness of the ideas presented.  Most often I hear that this is designed to cut down on lecture time and allow more time in class for discussion.  In my summer course I have little lecture time, so they get the basic material in a recording and follow up with the experience.

PowerPoint slides are the basis for all my recordings.  I already had most of them from teaching FA 207, so it was easy to play them and just talk about them as I would in class.  I had to create a few specific ones for particular field trips, but again, all of the visuals were slides.  I decided that my face need not appear on screen.  They get enough of me already! [Note: the CaptureSpace tool used for recording can capture any combination of computer screen, slides, and/or webcam – Ed]

I’ve learned several things:

  1. Students will not take the recordings seriously unless you test on the material.
  2. I needed help to get started on the recordings.  Ben Kahn, a trainer in Academic Technology Services came to my office and showed me how to do it on my computer.  He even loaned me a USB headset/microphone.
  3. I wrote down everything that Ben told me, step by step, because I forget the specifics about an hour after a training session.  That really saved me.
  4. The most practical thing I learned while recording is that you should leave a few seconds at the beginning and end without speaking.  You will always need to trim the beginning and end.  That’s a lot easier with a few seconds of silence.
  5. I accepted that these recordings would not be perfect.  I’m not perfect in class, so I gave myself permission to be good enough, not perfect.  As I learn more I can adapt and improve.
  6. It’s been invigorating to try something innovative at this stage in my career, after 28 years of teaching.  Maybe this old dog can learn new tricks.

*Featured image for this post: Portland Art Museum by Stacey Kizer used under CCA 2.0